"AN ETHICS OF VIOLENCE JUSTIFYING

ITSELF." SARTRE'S EXI)LORATIONS OF

VIOLENCE AND OPPRESSION

In his Notebooks for an Ethics, Sartre describes what hecaUs both an "ethics of force" and "an ethics of violencejustifying itself.',1 Its presentation consists of fourteenprinciples. Here are four of them: the victor is always right;acts of goodness are signs of weakness; one has no right toresist force unless one is strong enough to hold it back; and theviolcnce has always already bcgun. "rhe exalnples Sartre usesin this context- rape, Iynching, thc auto-da-fe - make clear thathe lists these principles in an attcmpt not to support, but ratherto expose justifications of violence. But elsewhere in the samebook Sartre tries to show the revo)utionary possibilities ofviolence and in so doing finds himself drawing on the sameprinciples. The present essay takes this ethics of violence fromNOlebooks tor an Ethics as the starting-point for areexamination ofSartre's notorious exaltation ofviolence in the1960s. Sartre 's discussions of violence in Crilique 0/Dialectical Reason and the Preface to Fanon's The Wretched0/ the Earth are often cited, but he defends the use of violencein a number of other places as weIl. For example, in anewspaper interview from 1962. Sartre declares "In my viewthe essential problem is to reject thc theory according to whichthe l ...cft owes it to itself not to respond to violence withviolence.,tl Sartre does not say this in a vacuum but less than amonth after his apartment had bcen bombed for the second

tJean-Paul Sartre, Cohier.f pour ulle nlorale. (Paris: Gaillimard, 1983),p. 194: trans. Oavid Pcllaucr, N()lehook..~ for all Elhic.t, (Chicago: Universityof Chicugo Press, 1992), p. 186. Henceforth ('M and NE respcctively.

2Jcan-Paul Sartrc, uRepondre a la violcnce par la violence'!' Frallce­()h.fer\tClleur. February I, 1962. Quoted hy Michael Contat and MichelRybalka. The Wrilillg.f 0/ Jea,,·Puul Surlre, vol. one, trans. Richard C.McClcary (Evanston: Northwestem University Press, 1974), p. 415.

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time. In 1968, in the context of the student revolution, Sartrepresents violence as the only thing left to the students: "In ourused-up Western countries, the only power to challenge on theLeft is made up of students and soon, I hope, of alJ the young.This power to challenge is violent becausc peoplc are doingviolcnce to it."JFinally. in UThe Maoists in France" Sartre doesnot disassociate himself from the idea he attributes to theMaoists that "everywhere that revolutionary violence is bornamong the masses, it is immediately and profoundly moral. n4

in isolation these comments are shocking and are intended tobe, but it is the thesis of this essay that it is not enough thatthey are seen in the context of their time. They cannot beassessed unless they are also read in the broader context ofSartre's reflections on violence, particularly in that mostexploratory of books, Notebooks on Ethics. 5

Violence is not an important concept in Being andNOlhingness, but insofar as Sartre makes conflict the originalmeaning of being-for-others, the scene is already set for aphiJosophy that ofTers Iittle or no escape from violence, at leastas broadly conceived.6 In Bein~ and Nothingness the foeus ofthis conflict is over who is to hold the power of the gaze. Theone who holds the Other in his or her gaze controls and givesidentity to the one who is looked at. It is with reference tothis context that one must understand Sartre's attempt inNOlebooks for an Ethics to define violence as "a refusal ofbeing looked at," in other words, as the refusal to be anything

)Jcan-Paul Sartre, Interview on Radio Luxembourg, May 12, 1968.Quoted by Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka. Tlle Wriling.f 01 Jean-PaulSa,.".,. vol. one, p. 525.

4Jcan-Paul Sartre, uLes maos en France." Situation.t. X. (Paris,(,allinlard, 1976). p. 45; trans. Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, Sartre in IheSe,,.elllit'.f. (London: Andre Deutsch, 1978), p. 169.

'No'~ho()k..f on Elhic.f is an exploratory text. Everything said there isonly provisional. To the extcnt that Sartrc did subject lhis text to furtherscrutiny. it was to judge it unsuitable for publication. 8t least 8t that time. Butthat nlerely nlcans that whatever we read there must be approaehed witheaution aod read as more tentative than it appcars to be.

"Jcan-Paul Sartre, L 'eire et le neUIlI, (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 431;trans. Ilale1 ßames. BeinS{ and Nothi"K"f!.u. (London: Methuen. 1957). p.364. Ilcnceforth EN and ßN respectively

other than a pure transcendence (CM 184; NE 176). Similarly,with reference to what he caUs "the pacified image ofviolence9

n Sartre emphasizes that violence is in the firstinstance a look, such as the look which transforms the slaveinto a thing, albeit it is further detined by languages (CM 277;NE 266-267). But although Sartre acknowledges a corporealbasis to violence in the bodies that have to oppose or confronteach other (CM 300; NE 288), for the most part Sartre in theseearly works offers a narrower conception of violence thanthese passagcs suggest. Notehooks for an Ethics offers athrecfold distinction between alienation, oppression, andviolence. If in the period immediately folJowing the SecondWorld War, Sartre is not led by his conflictual account ofinterpersonal relations to proclaim the ubiquity or virtualubiquity of violence, it is because the idea of oppressionintervenes. So, for example, instead of investigating thehistorical basis of violence, Sartre explores the historical basisof oppression.

Sartre has a lengthy discussion in Noteboolcs for an Ethicsof thc existential-ontological conditions of oppression (CM353..354; NE 325-398). In the course of it he challenges theclaim that oppression is economically determined (CM 353­354); NE 340). He does so by revisiting Engels' debate withDühring on thc question of whether violence or economics wasthe more primitive phenomenon. Dühring, on Sartre'saccount, upholds the position that one should take as one'sstarting-point the intersubjective relation independent of anyprior situation (CM 354; NE 341). Even though this is atendency to which phenomcnology is prone and one to whichBeing and NOlhingness could - at least on a certain staticreading - be said to have succumbed, Sartre accepts fromEngels the need for a dialectical account that recognizeshistorical reality. This leads Sartre to advocate a synthesis ofDühring and Engels. With Engels one must say that oppressionis not a gratuitous decision in the sense that it can only arise ata certain moment of technical and economic development.With Dühring one must say that oppression is a human fact inthe sense that one must take account of the human price thathas to be paid, whatever the economic advantage (CM 361­362; NE 347-348).

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Even though Sartre might have been expected to develophis thesis conceming the conflictual character 01" relations inBeinR and Norhingness into a philosophy in which violencesaturated all relations. in Nolehook..\· for an Elhic.'t hc nvoids thisconscqucnce. It is not violcnce that is ubiquitous butalienation. "the predominance ofthc Othcr in the pair Other andthe same" (CM 429; NE 413). Nevertheless, the structure ofalienation in Sartre is not as simple as this formu]a mightsuggest. Already in Notehook.'t for an Ethics Sartre'sundcrstanding ofalienation is informed by Lacan's earlyarticleon "Family Complexes in the Formation of the Individual.'w Itis on the basis of "the Other in me," the way the Other inhabitsme and makes me other, that the climate of oppression isspread: "from the very first moment, I oppress because I amoppressed, I transmit oppression" (CM 381; NE 367). As forthe distinction between oppression and violence, Sartre states itmost clearly in "Revolutionary Violence," a text that is includedin Notebooks for an Ethics as an appendix.

Violence. . . cannot be defined apart from somerelation to the laws that it violates (human or naturallaws). It represents a suspending of these laws, a"vacation from legality." Oppression, on the contrary,can be institutional. It suffices that oppressing classlegitimate its oppression by law and that the oppressedclass. out of weakness, complicity, ignorance, or anyother reason, obeys these laws and impJicitly orexplicitly recognizes them through its behavior. (CM579; NE 561).

Sartre applies this ·distinction to the condition of slaveholderswho. like their slaves, were born into the institution and whothus considered slaveowning to be both natural and legitimate(CM 579; NE 561). Hence, Sartre's judgment that theslaveowner was in good conscience, whether or not he was inbad faith (CM 580; NE 562). Similarconditions pertain today:

7Jacques Lacan. Le.f complexe.t /un,;/iuII,,'( dalls la /ormati()11 de 1'i"dividu,(Paris: Navarin. 1984). Sec (·M 380; NE 366-367.

a young bourgeois is an oppressor although he or she does notexercise any violence on the worker (CM 36 t ; NE 347).

Although Sartre initially defines violencc in terms of thelaws it breaks. he does not stop there. Violence is not only anintervention or a demand to attnin a certain goal. Whocvcr isviolent ulso claims the right tu bc violent. «("'M 18]; NE 173).Violence demands that it be recognized as legitimate andjustified (CM 185; NE 177). This is what is meant by "anethics of violence justifying itself," and the principles of theethics of force are the means by which it finds legitimization.So, for example, the victors write history and to that extentdetennine what was and what was not justified. Violence isalways engaged in batde for recognition from its victims. Thisintroduces the contradiction that is familiar from Hegel'smaster slave dialectic: vioJence attempts to render a free beinginessential at the same time that it wants that being to recognizethe vioJence as legitimate, which that being can only do only ifit retains its essentiality (CM 185; NE 177). As Sartreobserves9 at the very moment a torturer succeeds inconquering his victim '5 spirit, .the victim is reduced to beinginessential with the consequence that his or her recognition hasno valuc. Violence "needs the freedom it denies" «("tM 186; NE178). However, in Notebooks for an Ethics Sartre is not heldcaptive by Hegel's account of the master-slave dialectic. InBeing and Nothingness he already offers a provisional critiqueof ~Iegel as a basis for approaching the issue of our concreterelations with others (EN 290-300; BN 235-244). InNotebooks tor an Ethics Sartre gocs to some lengths to showthat Hegel's analysis would not apply to Black slaves in theUnited States. It lacks an historical basis. The fact that Sartredwells on this example reflects not only his growing obsessionwith racism, following his visit to the United States, hut also amore genera) concem with the institutional forms of violence.8

'See Jcan-Paul Sar1re. "Retour des Etats-Unis. Ce quc j'ai appris duprohlcmc noir;· Le FiRoro. June 16, 1945. p. 2; "Return from the UnitedStales: What I Leamed about the Black Problem.'· Irans. T. Denean Sharpley­Whiting. Exi.\'/t·Ilet in Black. cd. Lcwis R. Gordon. (New York: Routledge.1C)q1). pp. 83-89. Also Robert Bernasconi, "Sartrc's Gazc Returned: TheTran~fom,ation of the Phenomcnology of Racism.n (iraduale FacllilyPhiltJ.wlphy Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, 1995, pp.20 1-221.

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If Sartre pIaces such emphasis on exposing violence whereit has previously gone unacknowledged, it is because he knowsthat, short of absolute victory over one's enemies, this iswhere the battle over the justification ofviolence is fought. Todisclose the violence that created and sustained certain socialinstitutions is an essential part of legitimating the violencedirected against those institutions. That is why throughoutNotebooks for an Ethics Sartre insists on exposing the implicitforces of violence concealed under the ruJe of order. Sartreobserves that where slavery is the given order, freedomappears as disorder (CM 579; NE 561), but it presents aproblem for the attempt to justify the violence that theoppressed directs against the oppressor. Where past violenceis considered past, the target becomes the oppressor'scontrolling gaze. The problem is weil illustrated by Sartre'sappeal to the example of the workers' revolts at the beginningof thc IndustriaJ Revolution. Sartre describes the destruction oftools as an attempt to combat the way certain objects anticipateme. Machines embody the gaze of their designer and theentrepreneurs who order them. Their gaze addresses theworkers compelled to use them Destruction of the tool isdestruction ofthe gaze (CM 184; NE 176). Sartre shows howone freedom limits another within a system of complicity,between the oppressor and the oppressed, but this minimizesthe violence underwriting the system.

However, a different story emerges when Sartre focuses onhow violence puts the vanquished in the situation of having toaccept it in the form of Right. Resistance, instead ofestablishing itsel f as counter-violence, is constituted asunlawfulness and the punishment handed out has already beenaccepted in advance (CM 275; NE 264-265). Sartre presentsthe obstacles placed in the way of African-Americans voting inthe United States as an illustration of the hypocrisy of modernoppression. In this situation the oppressor treated theoppressed both as an abstract moral person by formally givinghirn or her a vote while at the same time establishingconditions, like heavy poIl taxes, that serve as a form ofconcrete negative violence and effectively reduce the potentialvoter to an objcct (CM 150; NE 142). To change the situation,Sartre argues, the oppressed have to use violence. Sartre also

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offers the exanlple of a Jewish captain who is denied entry bythe proprietor of an American hotel. Sartre sets out the kind ofreasoning that, as he puts it, is "classic" in the United Statesand which made such acts of discrimination possible (CM 152;NE 143). The formal freedom of the proprietor appears tolegitimate the violence done to the Jew on the material plane.But this is not "formal violence," such as the Jew would needto use in order to gain admission (CM 151; NE 143). Sartreexplains it as being like a child who hits a friend and thenimmediately sues for peace, saying "I give up", before there isa chance for retaliation. The rights of those who deny Blacksthe votc or who segregate restaurants and hotels are protectedby the fact that any violence that Inight change these conditionsis outlawed, even though these conditions were themselvesestablished by violence in an earlicr time (CM 150; NE 142).Hence, Sartre writes that the Evil in violence comes not fromthe fact that violence destroys right, but because violencecreates it, so that the vanquished has to accept right or die (CM275; NE 264). Sartre could not have been more emphatic inasserting a connection between violence and right: "All violencepresents itsel f as the recuperation of a right and, reciprocally,every right inexorably contains within itself the embryo ofviolence" (CM 185; NE 177).

It is, therefore, not only the children and grandchildren ofs)aveowners who take slavery for granted. According toSartre, there are slaves who accept the institution of slavery asnatural. Such a slave who is forced by hunger to steal meatfrom the master's table is still operating within the system. Tosteal the rneat is to acknowledge that the master owns it (CM405; NE 39/). The difficulty of thinking beyond theestablished order seems to suggest to Sartre that one can breakwith the order only through destroying the Other (CM 414;NE 400) and that such destruction of the Other can occur on/ythrough violence (CM 419; NE 404). Sartre describes howslaves revolt as much by buming down a barn as by killingthemaster. In both cases they reject the master's power andbreak through any complicity in the system that results fromtheir obedience (NE 412; CM 398). A violent person may nothave any explanation of why they did what they did, any morethan the hero or heroine who saves a drowning child has (CM

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413; NE 399). Lacking the power to have his or her ownproject and thus ofthe human itself(CM 416; NE 403).

From this perspective violence appears as a progresstoward freedorn (CM 419; NE 405). Addressing the questionthat subsequent commentators will continually raise againstSartre's account ofviolence, he writes the following:

Is it an absolute Evil, as pacifists and Christians wouldhave itt a necessary Evil as Camus says, or a good asSoreI suggests? The answer is clear. Violence is anabsolute Evil from the point ofview ofthe Other in me.And it isjust from this point of view, by the way, thatit gets constituted as violence. (CM 419; NE 405).

Sartre even argues that "tnle human ethics" is born in theisolated negative violence of the slave who bums the barn orthe big house or who kills the master and is immediatelyput todeath (CN 412; NE 398). The remark seems aimed at Hegel,or at least, at some of his commentators, such as Kojeve, whosaw in the slave's submission a beginning. Sartre does not saythe slave's death is a beginning of history, but of ethics, andthis because he fears that the dialectic of master and slave canbe employed to justify oppression (CM 66; NE 60). Thisindeed is what Engels seemed to be doing when he insisted onslavery as a form of progress, while neglecting the human factof oppression (CM 355; NE 342-348).

In a contemporary essay, "Materialism and Revolution,"Sartre claims that the true revolutionaries do not demand rightsfor themselves. They set out to destroy the idea of rightswhich they understand as a hoax of the privileged class. 9 Taclaim one's rights as an individual is not to be a revolutionary,but to seek to join the privileged class. One cannot claim theserights for one's whole class. This is because the rights derivefrom the oppression the revolutionary wants to destroy. Onecannot destroy the oppression without destroying the rights (S

~Jean-Paul Sartre, "Materialisme et revolution," S;luol;OllS. 1//. (Paris:Gallinulrd. 1976), p. 186; trans. Annette Michelson, Lilerary andI'hilosoph;Clll E...soys. (Ncw York: Criterion, 1955), p. 215. Hencefonh S/11 and J..I'E

I1I 187; LPE 216). Whereas oppressive violence operateswithin a Manichean conception of the world in which one onlyneeds to remove the obstacles the Jews, Blacks,homosexuals, heretics - to deliver the Good (NE 182; CM174), the revolutionary keeps to a minimum the violenceagainst the oppressor as human, but because the revolutionarywill need their expertise: "Thus in spite of everything, thebloodiest of revolutions involves coalition" (S 11I 189; LPE21 7). But the decisive coalition is that among the oppressedand, according to Sartre, it is established by violence: "Theunion of the oppressed will come about . . . through violenceand it will always contradict the existing right" (CM 150; NE142).

Even though Sartre seems to see a positive side to violence,he concedes that terrorist violence might prove a dead end, "anexperience that can benefit no one" (CM 420; NE 406). It isless a solution than a structure of servitude, like the slave'sresignation. Sartre concludes: "It just serves as a typicalexample of this mora] law: in the case of impossibility, thechoice of the Good leads to reinforcing the impossible, whatwe have to choose is Evil in order to discover the Good" (CM420; NE 406). One should not mistake Sartre's rejection ofthemaxirn of violence that "the end justifies the means" for arejection of violence. Sartre argues that insofar as one pursuesa concrete and finite goal which is not violence itself, then theuse of violence to attain the goal appears "unjustified andlimited lt (CM 216; NE 207).10 But Sartre proceeds to explainthat there is a contradiction that is immanent to ethics and thatjustifies violence. The problem is that however much I want aworld in which human beings are treated as ends, the situationexcludes that. For the factory owner who must treat theworking class as means, the end is sacrificed. Nevertheless,Sartre does allow a solution to the antinomy. It is found not in

IOLinda Bell uses this text to emphasize Sartre's rejection of the maxim ofviolence, even though she acknowledges that he may have foundrevolutionary violence may be unecessary" even justified in a limited sense.See "Violence, oppression, and regulative ideas:' Mall allel World.29, 1996,p. 76. A more balanced, but in my view still incomplete presentation ofSartre's views of violence, can be found in her Rellrillkillg Elhics ;11 Ihe Mid~'1

0/ Violellce, (Lanham: Rowman and LitUcticld, 1993). esp. 183-190.

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distinguishing means and ends more rigorously, but byrecognizing the other as both end and means. This happenswhen one helps the other to choose to be a means toward theabsolute end (CM 216; NE 207). Sartre's thinking here is farfrom clear but it confirms that even though Sartre finds noimmediate escape from violence, he does not exclude thepossibility of some release from it. Early in Notebooks /or anE/hics Sartre insists that the rejection of war does not suppresswar. But a few lines later we read: "Communication does notexist - it must be brought about . . .. Just as in a universe ofviolcnce you cannot conceive of pure love. UnJess that lovecontains the will to end the universe of violence" (CM 16; NE9). Sartre does not exclude the possibility of radicaltransformation. Indeed that is precisely what ethics must betor hirn. "Morality ... must be the choice of a world, not of aself' (CM 11; NE 3).

In spite of the great continuity between the analyses ofviolence in No/ebooks tor an Ethics and Critique 0/ DialecticalReason there is a decisive difference. The distinction betweenvioJence and oppression that in Notebooks /or an Ethics enablesSartre to diffuse the potential violence of his ontology ofoppression does not have the same structural role in Critique 0/a Dialectical Reason. Sartre's focus in this latter text is onviolence in much the same way as it is on oppression inNotebooks /or an Ethics. In Critique 0/ Dialectical ReasonSartre revisits Engels' critique of Dühring that had alreadypreoccupied hirn in Notebooks tor an Ethics. Not only isDühring still criticized for maintaining an essentialist view of"man." Sartre now portrays hirn Iess sylnpathetically thanbefore: he is described as a fool (CRD 221; CDR 148).Nevertheless, Dühring is credited with recognizing the role ofthe negative in history, even if he misleadinglychose to call it"violence."" Sartre no longer feels the need to offer aninterpretation of "pre-history" or "primitive society" as he haddone in Notebooks tor an Ethics. But there are more importantdifferences. Whereas Sartre writes in No/ebooks /or an Ethics

11 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la rai.'ion dialecliqlle" (Paris: Gallimard,1960), p. 221; trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith, Crilique 0/ Dialectical Reason,(London: NLB, 1976), p. 148. Hcnccforth eRD and CDR rcspcctively.

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that uoppression is only allowed as a concept if there is an aetof oppression" (CM 354; NE 341), in Critique 0/ a DialeetiealReason the emphasis moves away from the act to itsconditions: violence is not necessarily an action and as anaction it is often absent, but as interiorized scarcity it is Utheconstant non-humanity of human conduct" (CRD 221; CDR148-149). By making scarcity the material condition ofconcrete antagonism (CRD 192; CDR 113), Sartre resolves thequestion left unanswered in Notehooks tor an Ethies of thesourcc or meaning of the negative in history. That is to say, byequating the economy of scarcity with violence Sartre providesin Critique 0/ Dialeetieal Reason a synthesis of Dühring andEngels that had more explanatory value than that given inNotebooks tor an Ethies. Sartre now gives a historical accountopen to a dialectical development of how one person comes tosee another as the Other and as thc principle of Evil (CRD 221;CDR (49). Consistent with the "cthics of violence justifyingitself," this account provides a concrete basis for saying thatthe Other is the one who started the violence. What in Beingand Nothingness was the conflict inherent in the gaze becomesin Critique 0/ a Dialectieal Reason a focus on "conflicts ofscarcity, from nomad wars to strikes" (CDR 209; CDR 134).

A number of the same principles of the ethics of force thatare set out in Notebooks tor an Ethies are also rehearsed inCritique 0/ Dialectieal Reason. Sartre claims that the firstmovement of ethics is the constitution of evil and Manichaeism(CRD 208; CDR 132). This leads to the imperative "evil mustbedestroyed" (CRD 209; CDR 133). Violence is the means ofits destruction and it presents itself as retaliation against theviolence of the Other: "violence always presents itself ascounter-violence" (eRD 209; 133). Furthermore, even thoughin Critique 0/Dialectieal Reason Sartre introduces a distinctionbetween two forms of violence - the free praxis that is directedagainst the freedom of the Other and fraternity-terror - theyboth share the same basic character that violence had inNotebooks tor an Ethies: violcnce displays a reciprocalrecognition of freedom and a negation, either reciprocal orunivocal, of this freedom through the mediation of inorganicmatter (eRD 689; CDR 736).

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Itacism and colonialism are the COllcrete probleIns to whichSartrc applies the formal structures set out in Crilique 0/!J;aleC:lical Reason. One of thc book 's airns is to show theneed to appeal to history in such eases instead of resorting toan eeonomic or sociological interpretation (CRD 687 CDR733). Otherwise said, Critique 01 Dialectical Reasonestablishes the importance of free praxis over all determinisms,such as Engels economism. Sartre examines the developmentofFrench colonialism in Aigeria to show how it sustains itself."The racism which occurs to an Aigerian colonialist wasimposed and produced by the conquest of Aigeria, and isconstantly recreated and reactualized by every day practicethrough serial alterity" (CRD 672; CDR 7J4). On the onehand, racism is produced objectively by the colonial system.The low wages paid reduce the colonized to the level of sub­humanity, which is how they are then seen by the colonialist(CRD 671; CDR 714). On the other hand, the elementarystructures refer to various activities that produced them. Sartreunderstands this racism in terms of the ethics of for,ce: "it is initself self-justifying violence: violcnce presenting itself asinduced violence, counter-violence and legitimate defense"(CRD 677; CDR 720). This means that, irrespective of whatthe colonized does or does not do, the colonialists' violencearises from their image of the colonized as other-than-man(CRD 676; CDR 720). It enables the colonizer to project theproblem as calling for a social solution and not a politicalsolution (CRD677; CDR 721).

Sartre's analysis shows how the colonial situation wasinfused with violence. However complex the process leadingto the conquest of Aigeria - and Sartre insists that the Frenchdid not know how to make use of its conquest (CRP 672;CDR 715 and 722) - it instituted an original situation ofviolence as the fundamental relation of the colonialists to thecolonized (CRD 672; CDR 714). This was the expression of astill abstract racism which constituted the enemy as inferior.But the transformation of Musliln society brought about as aresult of the conquest was a real expression of violence. Astructured society was turned into an atomized crowd, themerrlbers of which were produced as serial Others through thisviolence (eRD 673; CDR 715). Critique 01Dialectical Reason

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refcrs to the people born into this system the colonizers andcolonized, as the "the children of the objective violence" (CRD675; CDR 718). Without underwriting determinism, Sartreinsists that one cannot escape from the consequences of thevioJence ofone's forebears (CRD 675-676; CDR 719). Sartrewas not thereby justifying violence against the oppressorsimply on the basis of the fact that the oppressor had started it.Rather he was exposing the fiction that the revolt initiates theviolence.

The point of Sartre' focus on history is not only to showfree praxis in history, but also the effects of that praxis. Pastoppressive praxis produced the situation (eRD 679; CDR 723).For example, Sartre shows that the form taken by Aigeriansociety in the wake of colonialism was by no means necessary,as economic determinism would maintain. To restore agencyto history. Sartre appeals to the distinction between praxis andprocess that he had introduced earlier in the book. If thecolonial system is infused with violence, "it is man whoinscribcd his violence in things as the etemal unity of thispassive mediation bctween men" (CRD 675; CDR 718). IfFrcnch bourgeois society pauperizes the feudal Arabcommunity it encounters, this is not because of the former'seconomic superiority, but because of "the revolting brutalitywhich so clearly characterized capitalism in its origins" (eRD675; CDR 719). What looks like the inert result of a strictdeterminism is in fact produced by the petrified violenceconstituted by the presence of the colonial army (CRD 679;CDR 723). Or, more precisely, the inertia-violence of theinstitution absorbs the old violence in the objective certainty ofviolence as it is represented by the army. Nevertheless, thecolonized experience this violence not simply as alienation butas "unforgivable violence," the deliberate constraint imposed onthem from outside (CRD 679; CDR 724). Sartre concludes,nif violence becomes a praxis of oppression, this is because italways was one" (CDR 686; CDR 732).

Nevertheless, this does not undermine Sartre's sense of thecOlnplicity between the oppressor and the oppressed, which hehad illustrated in No/ebooks for an E/hics by appealing to theslaves' resignation, their acceptance of slavery as a human fact(CM 406 and 481; NE 392 and 464). Sartre's analysis of the

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colonial systenl of violence leads in Critique 01 DialecticalReason to an insight into the reciprocity of the colonialists andthe colonized (CRD 676; CDR 720). They are a couple,"produced by an antagonistic situation and by one another"(CRD 677; CDR 721).

The struggle between the oppressed and oppressorsultimately became the reciprocal interiorization of asingle oppression: the prime object of oppression,interiorizing it and finding it to be the negative sourceof is unity, appalled the oppressor, who recognized inviolent rebellion, his own oppressive violence ashostile force taking hirn in turn as its objecl. Andagainst his own violence as Other, he created acounter-violence which was simply his own oppressionbecome repressive, that is to say, reactualized andtrying to transcend the violence of the Other, in otherwords his own violence in the Other. (CRD 687; CDR733).

The struggle between oppressor and oppressed becomes a rigidproccss of exploitation through the structure of alienation.This enables Sartre to take the responsibility for justifying theirviolence from the oppressed and put it squarelyon theshoulders of the oppressor: "The violence of the rebel was theviolence of the coloniaiist; there was never any other" (eRD487; CDR 733). Unless one recognizes that what is at issue isan ethics of violence justifying itself one might readily mistakethis for a detenninism of the kind that Sartre sought to avoidor, equally as bad, a reduction of the rebel to a tool of theoppressor, even in his or her revolt.

I have noted the role of alienation in Sartre's analysis of thehistory of slavery in Notebook lor an Ethics and his analysis ofcolonial violence in Critique 0/ Dialectical Reason because,whcn critics of Sartre focus on his later pronouncements aboutviolcnce in such texts as his Preface to Fanon's The Wretched0/ tlle Earth, they tend to dweil on Sartre'g support for theviolence of the colonized. This is to overlook the fact thatSartrc's argument is dominated by colonial violence, the

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violence that seeks to dehumanize the colonized by destroyingtheir culture, their traditions and their language. 12 Sartre says itclearly enough in describing how the colonized are drawn intoviolence: "first, the only violence is the settler's; but soon they\vill rnake it thcir own" (DT 47~ WE 17). And again: "at first itis not their vio)ence, it is ours" (DT 48; WE 18). What Sartrelearns from Fanon is a new way of describing the alienation atthe hcart of violence. Violence becomes a necessity for thecolonized: "their mad impulse to murder in the expression ofthe native's collective unconscious" (DT 48; WE 18). If theyfai) to express their violence, it devastates thern: "to freethemselves they even massacre each other" (DT 48; WE 18).Sartre insists that this irrepressible violence is a form ofhealing. Violence alone can heal the wounds inflicted byviolence (DT 60; WE 30). Fanon calls it "cleansing violence"(la violence desintoxique) (DT 127; WE 94). Sartre'scontribution is to emphasize the role of the European in thisprocess. Sartre insists that every European is as good as anaccomplice in the crime of colonialism to the extent that he orshe is diverted from the problem and fails to address it (DT 54;WE 24): "passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of theoppressors" (DT 55: WE 25). The exorbitant rhetoric in whichSartre announces the beginning of a new order sounds fiattoday. It detracts from the fact that few other texts have sopowerfully called colonialists and new-colonialists to theirresponsibilities. But it is not "a philosophy of violence in andfor itself," which is what Raymond Aron calls it: 3

I have not attempted to cover every stand of Sartre'sreflections on violence, nor subjected these reflections to a fuH

12Jcan.Paul Sartre. Preface in Frantz Fanoll. Les damne.5 de lu terre, (Paris:Gallimard. 1991), p. 45; trans. {Constancc Fannington. The Wretched 01 theEQrth~ (New York: Grove Weidenfield. 1991), p. 15. Henceforth DT and WErespectively. For an example of one of Sartre's critics who ignores pastviolcnce to focus only on new violencc and who thus fails to address hisargun\cnt~ See Hannah Arednt. 0" Via/eI/ce, (New York: Harcourt, Brace andWorld. 1970), pp. 89-91. Of course, Arcndt did not have access toNotehooks for ('li Ethics.

"Rayrnond Aron~ Jlistoire et dialectiqlle de la vio/enceu (Paris: Gallimard.1973). p. 218; trans. Barry Cooper, Ili.'itory und Ihe Dia/eclic of Vio/ence,(Oxford: ßasil ßlackwell. 1975), p. 192.

cratlque. Sartre's later texts are not free of a certaingloritication of violence that undennines his genuine insightsinto the place of violence in society. Foremost among theseinsights is his recognition of the depth of the violence inherentin society, its reinscription as right, and the arguments used tojustify it. Nevertheless, Sartre himself was weil aware of theirlimitations. His ethics of violence did not always equip hirn todistinguish good violence from bad. For example, in aninterview given in 1960, Sartre acknowledges that he was not,nor would he ever be, able to detennine whether a specific actis an act of revolutionary violence or whether it goes beyondwhat could be justified in tenns of the revolution. '4Furthermore, in conversation with Benny Levy, Sartre deniesthat violence can produce fraternity as claimed in Critique 01Dialectical Reason, and he in general distances himself fromthe tone set in his Preface to The Wretched 0/ the Earth. 15 Ihave chosen to emphasize the continuities in Sartre'sretlections on violence, focusing on those strands of Notebooksfor an Ethics that point toward and illuminate the later andmore familiar accounts, but I do not want to leave theimpression that Sartre maintained a single view across thisperiod. Sartre's discussions of violence continued to exhibitthe same sense of exploration as characterized Notebooks loran Ethics. That is why these discussions are better read asprovocations to think further than as dogmas.

University ofMemphis ROBERT BERNASCONI

'4Jean-Paul Sartre, uLes ecrivains en pcrsonne;," SituCltio"s, IX, (Paris:Gallirnard, 1972), p. 28.

'~Jean-Paul Sartre and Benny Levy, L'espoir nlainlenant, (Lagrasse:Verdier, 199). pp. 6) -66; trans. Adrian van den Hoven, Hope Now(Chicago: Univcrsity of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 90-95.

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